Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism

406 Pages·1996·37.52 MB·English

by  Dangerous Bedfellows, Ephen Glenn Colter

Lisa Duggan
PROLOGUE
We are living in a terrifying time of
crisis for progressive politics of all varieties. At the national level, we
are watching as conservative Republicans shred the already tattered
and inadequate welfare state, replacing health and education with
prisons and police. Globally, these efforts tie in with the international
retailing of low-wage economies and low-service states (for most of the
world's populations). In corollary cultural terms, public spaces for
political expression are shrinking dramatically. In the U.S., public
funding for the arts, the commitment to public broadcasting, and the
so far relatively unpoliced Internet are all at risk. Meanwhile, corporate
media, the most conglomerated undemocratic vehicles for culture and
politics, are expanding.
What's a queer activist to do? Familiar brands of political action,
whether liberal reformist (calls for inclusion of gays in the military) or
radical performative (kiss-ins at the mall), seem woefully inadequate.
Identity-based calls for group rights not only appear paltry in the current
climate, but continually fail to produce the alliances that seem crucial
to any effective politics. Radical alternatives to identity politics, whether
left-economist or anarcho-culturalist, have so far also failed to create
any kind of effective collective presence that might be called a "left."
Since the early 1980s, sexuality has circulated through this crisis of
progressive politics in a protean, insinuating way. As a wider and wider
range of political contests has been staged on the ground of sex,
progressive political forces have found themselves divided and stymied,
unable to mobilize coherent responses. Three examples may serve to
ix
X POIICING PUBLIC SEX
illustrate this point: the "sex wars" that divided feminist politics in the
1980s, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill Senate hearings that seriously
challenged African-American and civil rights politics in the early 1990s,
and the emerging sexual politics of HIV prevention that have now
shattered the once (relatively) united front of gay community AIDS
activism.
In all three sensational political conflicts focused on the arena of
sexuality, the identity categories underpinning liberal and progressive
organizing have exploded. During the 1980s, anti-pornography feminists'
insistence that "women" are uniformly subordinated by "pornography"
met with the furious rejoinder that these founding terms are funda-
mentally incoherent—^neither all "women" nor all "pxamography" are alike
enough to support the argument for state censorship. Opponents of anti-
pornography feminism also pointed out that the alliances constructed
on the ground of these terms—among moral conservatives, local economic
interests, and some feminists, all of whom seemed ready to agree that
"porn degrades women"—ultimately operated against the interests of
feminists, in an all-too-familiar melodramatic protectionist mode.
If the spectacle of conflict over the fate of pornography coincided
with and signalled feminist political stall and stagnation, then the
sensational portrayal of the Thomas-Hill hearings laid bare the impasses
of the civil rights politics of race before a politically prurient national
audience. Who could speak for African Americans? How could support
for the full participation of African Americans at every level of national
life be separated from support for this conservative Supreme Court
nominee? How could outrage at the trafficking in voyeuristic displays
of black sexual stereotypes be separated from support for Anita Hill,
or opposition to Clarence Thomas?
These political brushfires exposed the fractured categories of
"women" and "blacks," so that no one, no organization could now
speak easily on behalf of the groups designated in this way. Who, then,
could speak on the national stage on behalf of progressive politics of
any kind? Given that "labor" had been similarly fractured and disabled
since the 1970s, what actors would remain to speak for any "left" public
collectivity at all?
Now, in the mid-1990s, as "lesbian and gay" people and interests
have appeared openly on the national political stage for the first time.
lisa Duggan xi
we see another fracturing begin. In the debates over the policing of
public sex that are chronicled in this volume, we see "gay" spokesmen
(and they are all men), located primarily within the mainstream
commercial press, claim to represent the authentic interests of gay
people. These self-appointed representatives argue that state regulation
of public sexuality is the best protection for "our" health. The opponents
of this moralizing new gay politics, speaking eloquently in these pages,
make many of the same moves that the opponents of anti-porn politics
made a decade ago. They refuse to allow self-appointed protectors to
represent "gay" people, and they point out the dangerous alliances
constructed among real estate interests, reactionary politicians, and the
new proponents of respectable gay domesticity.
This focuses our attention on a crisis of representation, both
discursive and political. What do "gay" people want, and who can
represent us? If we fracaire into the multiplicity of identities and interests
invoked by the term "queer," what are the implications of this fracturing
for unified or coherent political action?
The editors of this volume address this central problem imagina-
tively, productively—not by trying to "save" identity politics, or by
imposing their own version of what's best for "gay" people, but by
struggling to rework the terms of representation, and thus of alliance
and intervention. Looking at the swirling debates in New York City and
elsewhere around questions of public sex, the editors have collected
provocative essays that ask us, whose interests are at stake here? They
offer us a look at the Times Square zoning controversy and its relation
to Disney's hostile takeover of 42nd Street, They ask us to consider the
situation of sex workers. They point our attention to the construction
of HIV identity categories and the emerging perceived opposition
between the interests of positives and negatives. And, most importantly,
they ask us to consider all these things together, in order to grasp our
local situation in as broad a frame as possible. What emerges from this
intellectual practice is the possibility of a reinvigorated politics—a politics
that can intervene without always already fracturing every interest into
the tiniest fragments, but that can still approach its task without invoking
bogus, homogenizing universals or monolithic, exclusive categories.
These are the imaginative yet concrete politics we now need.
Without them, we cannot proceed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dangerous Bedfellows would like to
thank several people for their support in putting this book together. This
anthology would not have been possible without their help. First, we
thank our friends at South End Press. Loie Hayes was wholeheartedly
behind this project from its inception, and Lynn Lu provided constant
and constaictive feedback throughout the book's production.
Of course, this collection would not have been possible without the
hard work of our contributors. They brought a world of new ideas,
unique perspectives, and expertise to this book. Special thanks also to
Loring McAlpin and John Lindell for their artistic insight and design
expertise, and for tirelessly scanning porn videos frame by frame.
This collective began to take shape at the Socialist Scholars Confer-
ence at Manhattan Borough College in April 1995. The panel we presented
brought the Dangerous Bedfellows together as a igroup, and we thank
Lynn Chancer and the Social Text Collective for their help in organizing
that appearance. In May 1995, we organized a conference at New York
University called "Policing Queers in the Public Sphere," This conference
ultimately served as the impetus for creating this book, and we are
grateful for all those who contributed their time and energy: Jose Munoz,
Mark Schoofs, Kendall Thomas, Carole S, Vance, and Michael Warner.
Several people assisted the Dangerous Bedfellows in a number of
capacities, going beyond the call of duty by giving their time and
advice generously: Allan Bembe, Gina Diaz, Bill Dobbs, Marc Elovitz,
Robert Fitch, Phillip Brian Harper, Alyssa Hepburn, Nan D, Hunter,
Iain Machell, Joe Neel, David Nimmons, Cindy Patton, Amy Randall,
vii
viii POLICING PUBLIC SEX
Eric Rofes, Tricia Rose, Norman Siegel, Chris Straayer, and Alan Wald,
as well as the AIDS Prevention Action League and Community AIDS
Prevention Activists. We are also grateful to Jeffrey Miller, Jonathan
Parsil, and all the folks at the fabulous Jefferson House in Miami Beach,
whose tropical hospitality kept us from having a collective nervous
breakdown.
In addition, we would like to thank our friends and family members
who helped us formulate our ideas and get our work done: Paul Amar,
Vincent Baine, Robert Bingham, Frank Browning, Jeffrey Buchsbaum,
Felicity Callard, Debbie Cohler, Robyn Dutra, Martin and Susan Hoff-
man, Shannon Holman, Janis Holzapfel, Bill Hood, Jeanette Hsu,
Ishmael Houston-Jones, Adrian C. Lawrence, D. Magrini, Gitanjali
Maharaj, Henry Montes, Russ Nordmeyer, Juok Pae, Christine Patterson,
George Patterson, James Pendleton, Cynthia Redick, Alexandra Ringe,
Dan Selcer, Amy Shore, Jennifer Silverman, Adair Smith, Mark Sullivan,
Rebecca Sumner-Burgos, Bill Wanderski, Bram Wessel, Sean Wiebersch,
Karen Williams, Steve Wolf, and Jonathan Wurtzel, as well as our
colleagues in the American Studies Program at New York University.
Finally, two people deserve special thanks: Lisa Duggan and Andrew
Ross. More than supportive mentors, these two have been integral to
this anthology from the outset. We couldn't have dreamed of putting
together this volume without their patience, wisdom, and valuable input.
In addition, Andrew's dry wit and Lisa's generosity at cocktail hour
helped to grease the wheels of our collective creative process.
Sex was not something one simply
judged; it was something to be administered. It was in the nature of a
public potential; it called for management procedures; it had to be
taken charge of by analytical discourse. In the eighteenth century, sex
became a "police" matter: not the repression of disorder, but an ordered
maximization of collective and individual forces.
'— Michel Foucault,
The History of Sexuality, Volume I
SOUTH END PRESS
SOUTH END PRESS is a nonprofit,
collectively mn book publisher with over 180 titles in print. Since our
founding in 1977, we have tried to meet the needs of readers who are
exploring, or are already committed to, the politics of radical social change.
Our goal is to publish books that encourage critical thinking and
constructive action on the key political, cultural, social, economic, and
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Through the Institute for Social and Cultural Change, South End
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For a free catalog or information about our membership program,
which offers two free books and a 40 percent discount on all titles,
please write to South End Press, 116 Saint Botolph Street, Boston, MA
02115; call 1-800-533-8478; or visit our website at hnp://www.lbbs.org.
Other Titles ef Interest
Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS
by Cindy Patton
Women, AIDS, and Activism
by the ACT UP/NY
Women and AIDS Book Group
Culture Clash:
The Making of Gay Sensibility
by Michael Bronski
"Policing Public Sex is a new map through unexplored territory. With wit,
scholarship, and sheer intellectual bravery, these writers take us through a
world in which old definitions are useless, standard references are pointless.
Engaging, enlightening, and engrossing, this collection makes us re-examine
not only what we have learned with our hearts and heads, but how we have
ordered our desires as well."
—Michael Bronski, author.
Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility
"Not only does this volume represent a crucial intervention in the current
debate on how best to prevent the spread of HIV infection in queer commu-
nities, it also constitutes a necessary challenge to the reliance on the putative
protections of 'privacy' that has long characterized the official lesbian and gay
rights movement in the United States. A vital and compelling instance of cultural
analysis and critical activism."
—Phillip Brian Harper, author.
Are We Not Men?Masculine Anxiety
and the Problem of African-American Identity
"Policing Public Sex is one of the most important books about sexual
politics to appear this year It's too bad we can't make this book required
reading for all the television news anchors who so gleefully whip up negative
public opinion about fraternal and open queer sex."
—Pat Califia, author.
Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex
"Sex at the end of the millenium is extraordinarily complex. Addressing
the debates about safe sex education, sex in bathhouses and parks, prostitution,
and media publicity of sex. Policing Public Sex provides a vital historical and
global context for today's sexual liberationists."
—Cindy Patton, author.
Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS
"During a time when anti-sex gay conservatism increasingly dominates the
queer public sphere, the authors in Policing Public Sex speak boldly and
brilliantly for sexual liberation.... and point in a hopeful (even Utopian) and
pragmatic direction towards a future where sexual freedom, political activism,
and disease prevention can work together in the same moment."
—Eric Rofes, author. Reviving the Tribe:
Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality
and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic
Dangerous Bedfellows
INTRODUCTION
wolicing Public Sex is a somewhat
misleading title. Some readers might assume a clear boundary between
public and private sex, but the writers here do not. In this day and age,
you can't avoid public sex even if you stay at home. From accidentally
catching your neighbors naked or fucking, to casually flipping channels
at two in the morning and catching a porn star sucking some voluptuous
young woman's tits or fondling some beefy young man's dick, you live
in a world filled with voyeurs, peeping toms, and sophisticated visual
consumers. In many of the places Americans call home, sex is neither
here nor there. It's always on the line.
In calling this book Policing Public Sex, we have intended to be
provocative. We want to expose the narrow-mindedness of critics on
the right, who dismiss public sex as sexvial libertarianism, but we also
want to reveal the presumptions of enthusiasts on the left, who may
consider public sex merely an entitlement or legacy of the "sexual
revolution," Thus we feel a need to warn the reader that we often use
terms like "public," "private," "sex," "safer sex," and "community" in an
improper sense, as flags of convenience. But it is the very definition of
these terms that provides both our point of departure and the question
to which we return: what is the future of AIDS activism?
This discussion is historically grounded in the early 1980s, Many
HIV prevention movements have since come into existence. As Cindy
Patton and Douglas Crimp have observed, it was a critical moment in
which gay identity became queer activist. While queer politics turned
the country's health care system into a battleground, AIDS cultural
13
14 POLICING PUBLIC SEX
criticism turned fertile new ground in gay and lesbian studies. As
Michael Warner, Walt Odets, and Eric Rofes have noted, the 1980s were
a crucial period in queer politics due to the development of AIDS
prevention activism. Yet the current debates have emerged as witness
to a rise in anxiety around AIDS.
This book was conceived as an introduction to the patterns and
strategies structuring current debates around public sex. Arguments
over sex and sexually transmitted disease have typically been con-
ducted in terms of debates between AIDS cultural criticism and
American identity politics. Since not all gays and lesbians define their
sexuality as political, the lives of most queers are probably informed
less by the agendas of gay organizations than by the social lives and
worlds they create for themselves. The essays in this anthology are not
simply a group of thematically related writings—they work together to
theorize historical movements and social change.
Because we are concerned with presenting arguments that depart
from the usual interpretations of public sex as counterintuitive to HIV
prevention, we have tried to present new working definitions of public
sex, AIDS activism, and queer politics. By bringing together essays that
consider public sex as homo-sex and public sex as paid sex, for
example, we are focusing on acts rather than identities; this approach
seems essential in order to make a meaningful intervention in the
policing of non-normative sexual behaviors. Many other queer political
projects traffic in well-worn identities that are useful in some instances,
but we feel that this approach would draw boundaries in the very places
where sexual practices break them down. We want to play with the
dividing line between public and private, screw with the notion of a
totalizing queer leadership class or gay "community," and fuck with the
false binary between regulation and education. Our approach is to
make connections among all of these issues and reveal their competing
interests.
In New York City, for example, public sexual culture includes peep
shows, porn theaters, backrooms, bathhouses, adult bookstores, topless
bars, strip clubs, lap dance clubs, sex clubs, and sex parties. Public
sexual culture also includes smiling marchers in the Gay Pride Parade
and sassy drag queens at Wigstock. If you count sex workers on street
corners, then you also have to account for the high-fashion models on